Find myself thinking this morning about Andy Yan's aphorism that the housing market is a collection of Ferraris when the public can afford hondas. I think this analogy is overstating the nature of the new housing stock in Vancouver

(Unless he's talking about the abundance of these, which does not seem to be the case)

The new apartment stock in Vancouver is not so much Ferraris (high performance, high end luxury vehicles designed from the ground up for that purpose) but Buicks, maybe a few Cadillacs

What's the difference here? A luxury car is a luxury car, no? Well, no. A Buick or Cadillac is actually just a chevy with the car-equivalent of granite counter tops

Very often the frame is the same, the motor the same, the parts the same, just some surface detailing and extra features. A 'luxury condo' or a mass market 'luxury car' are kinda similar in that respect.

(in my personal experience, a cadillac that is uncomfortable to drive when you have a wallet in your pocket does not sound like a rich man's car to me, but opinions may vary)

If we want to continue the car analogy here to Honda though, do you know how Acura (Honda's luxury division) came to be?

In 1981 the US bullied Japan into 'voluntary export restraint', reducing the number of Japanese cars that could be sold in the US 1.68 million. The big Japanese carmakers responded to this supply shortfall by introducing luxury marques (Acura, Lexis, Infiniti)

The downstream implications of which for the Buicks of apartment supply should be obvious

now, they do make 'actual' luxury apartments that can be analogized to Ferraris - the ones with large floorplates, pools, gyms, on-site staffing, etc. But these aren't characteristic of most of the new stock, for which the amenities are more "hot water, someone vacuums the hall"